balik kampung

Juraissic age HDB playground at Kim Keat - all images by J

My parents were born on this tropical island. But my father's father was from that most southern of southern China - the godforsaken island of Hainan; and my mother's was probably from Swatow. Pa J on the other hand was actually born in the Hokchia stronghold of Zhang Jian, and had travelled to the Nanyang by boat when he was a boy.

On our tiny city-state, the idea of a hometown may have little meaning. Ask a Singaporean "where were you born?", and the answer would probably just be "XYZ Hospital" instead of "XYZ Village/Town/City/Country". This would, of course, change with more new migrants.

Still, since we were both on leave from work, this morning J and I decided to put on our domestic tourist tags and go visit what comes closest to being our hometown - the neighbourhood of Bendemeer!

The walk from Toa Payoh to Bendemeer brought us through the flats of Kim Keat guarded by 2 dinosaurs (what was going through the minds of those Town Council folks who commissioned this?!), through the Shuang Lin Temple, across the Pan Island Expressway to the butterfly-filled fields beside Whampoa Estate, and across the Central Tunnel Expressway to the Towner Estate which is right beside the 4 decade old HDB estate of Bendemeer.



J's corridor playground + Sticker-style graffiti by disgruntled Bendemeer inhabitant

There's nothing romantic about this, just a fact of the smallness of our island that both J and I had actually lived in adjacent blocks of flats in Bendemeer when we were kids.

But I would be dishonest if I said I did not like being able to share with J memories of the same kindergarten, the playground just at the foot of our flats, the same market and food centre, the same provision shop, the same stationer's with its glass cabinets of colourful erasers and pencil sharpeners we would gaze at, the same Lao Fuzi comics by the barber/hairdresser, the same beautiful mosaic-tiled wall of the adults' United Overseas Bank...



surviving the times

But taking away these particular memories, our experiences were vastly different. I with my Grandma, and J with his family of 7 siblings. Admittedly, J seemed to have more varied and colourful relationships with the neighbourhood and its inhabitants and merchants.

It is also a fact of this island's life that the neighbourhood of your childhood memories will not stay unchanged through time. And perhaps a particular aesthetic of memory would evolve given all this. I don't mean a hazy, warm-fuzzy-feeling sort of nostalgia-influenced aesthetic. But a kind of aesthetic where materiality and time will lock arms, tightly.

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p/s Domestic Tourism food tips
If you are in Bendemeer, visit its market and food centre for yummy fried carrot cake (the black sauce kind) at stall 01-35 and the famously ungrammatical "Eat-May-Know" rojak. To get to Bendemeer, take the North-East line and drop off at Boon Keng Station.

white

click for flickr view

About Christmas and gifts, I just overheard this on a news interview tonight - "帶一個感恩的心". Friends, hope you have a good Christmas and New Year holiday.

the walking man

image by J

The joys of walking are seldom fully experienced on this island. The reasons are many: it's the weather - that debilitating heat or the indecisive raining that is not quite a steady drizzle or a thunderstorm; the fast pace of life; the design of our pavements and streets; "there's nothing to see"... Or maybe, as in many cities, we reserve our walking for indoor, air-conditioned environments designed to visually entice and seduce at every step (no, not museums, but shopping malls).

But the nature-lover's trek, the scholarly stroll, the solitary romantic's ramble, the lovers' meander, or just a destination-driven march are all possible (and enjoyable) on our small, car-mad island.

When I was a student, I had spent my holidays walking around the city alone. Now, since we don't drive, J and I walk a fair bit everyday whenever we can give the bus or train a miss. 2 Saturdays ago, with J at the gym and the December morning air agreeing, I walked around half of Toa Payoh alone. It was a lovely walk. I thought about this book.

When I had first read the graphic novel The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi, I did not know what to make of it. Used to either manga's futuristic apocalyptic visions (Jiro Taniguchi had drawn one of these, Icaro with Moebius) or strangely moralistic fantasies, I was expecting with each frame or page of The Walking Man that there would be an odd twist in the tale. Perhaps this nameless man was a serial murderer or rapist. Perhaps he had just moved into a town with a dark past. Or perhaps he will have an affair with that woman he has just met in the park.

But as the book progressed in its slow, desultory pace, all there was was as the title promised - a man (middle-age, seemingly well-off and nerdy) and his random walks in a town he and his wife had just moved into,a slightly old town. He gets caught in the rain. His glasses are smashed when he passes a group of boys playing in a field. He has a chance encounter with a woman in an autumnal park. He meets a bird watcher. He spots a local bird in the next chapter. He finds a lipstick left behind by a group of giggly schoolgirls. So used is the typical reader to our own cityscape and TV dramas that we expect these chance encounters to each lead on to something sordid, dangerous - well, exciting. Yes, now that's reality, or rather, life!

So for its stubbornly idyllic and nostalgic ways, I guess this story is not unlike a fantasy. Yet The Walking Man is oddly about "real" life. Not just for its realistic renderings in each frame, but how Jiro Taniguchi manages to evoke the very sensory experiences (and more) - the sight, smell, thrill, touch, humour, wonder, curiosity, taste, even possibly temptation - of that nameless walking man through his story and images. These walks translate into every positive sense of being alive.

I was also reminded of another book Designing Design by Japanese graphic designer (Muji's CD) Kenya Hara that J had recently bought. Kenya Hara, in writing about the disorientation of too much media/information today, describes it as too little information. Our brain has too little, not too much stimulation. He compares our experiences today to having a multitude of post-it notes on the brain, but none stimulating our human brain in all its sensory possibilities of knowing and living. There's a diagram in his book where, to an outline of the human body, he sketches a diagram of the brain not just in the head, but brains located all over our bodies - in our hands, shoulders, feet, chest...


not at this pace lah! - image by J

During one of our many walks around the city on a hot, sticky weekend, J and I were determined to get to our next destination in the shortest time possible. But I thought perhaps all the speed walking is generating more heat. So I deliberately slowed my pace, and made sure that I felt my feet - from heel to toes - touch and lift off the pavement each and every step. I don't know about J, but I felt immediately calmer and cooler - anchored not to to heat from the cement, but a kind of solid ground...metaphysically speaking!

Alone, you get to tune in to your body/senses in the context of the world around you; with someone, there's another kind of living. Either way, walking is good. Yes, despite the punishing sun, the irritating indeterminate half-rain-half-drizzle, the rush for the next errand, our often unattractive patchwork cement sidewalks, and the lure of those comfortable, shopping mall corridors...

remains

afterlife of a moldy towel by J

As part of the admission process for a study programme I've applied to, I was required to submit a sample of my undergraduate and postgraduate writing. As such, I spent an hour in my old room going through all 10 thick ring folders of notes and essays on literature that, 10 years ago, was still so precious I actually put it on a 3-month sea voyage from a northern island to our tropical one.

The folders are accompanied by 2 boxes of index cards, neatly documenting every article and book I had referred to and made notes from, the highlights now a sickly candy floss pink. Having found the 2 essays I needed, for a moment I contemplated trashing the whole lot. But only for a moment. Then I stashed the 2 boxes of index cards and 10 stacks of mildewed paper back into the cupboards, unsure if they would ever see light of day. Ah, sentimentalism - that's what remains of an education!

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in the quiet of the night

This was meant to be a post about Michel Faber's extremely well-written and pleasurable novel The Crimson Petal and the White, but the Singapore Writers Festival, a biennial event sponsored by the National Arts Council hijacked the review.

I've never been entirely convinced of the need of a writers festival. People who write getting together to listen to other people who write talk instead - and talk among themselves. All this had seemed unnecessary. As if writing itself was not vanity enough, there should be voices declaring.

But I looked forward to this year's Writers Festival. Not for anything but the names of 3 writers I recognised and admire. There was Goh Poh Seng who would be coming back to Singapore from Canada after so many years away, now ill, to give the opening address. Chinese poet Bei Dao, whose poems I enjoy (despite the appalling translations). And Arthur Yap.

Last evening, wheyface and I attended the Arthur Yap reading. It took place in a room of some 6-7 of his paintings. And since he had passed away last year, there was the sense of a belated eulogy about the event. Folks who knew him personally or was related to him in the 3rd or 4th degree read his poems, or their own which were inspired by or dedicated to the man.

The event was interesting for the people who attended as audience or who read - poets (the dignified, the excitable, the mediocre) and wannabe poets, academics (always fun to watch, Nabokov's Pnins), students, old girls, young boys... Ah, you could mine the evening for stories (invented, inspired or observed) and emerge terribly rich, these barely concealed gems for the eternally kaypoh.

And of course, the poetry itself. Read aloud, they speak as much of the reader as the poet. Writer Christine SuChen LIm read sensitively and musically - making you wonder if her prose would be equally nuanced. Lee Tzu Pheng, Arthur's fellow academic and poet, read steadily, assuredly - but conscious too of Arthur Yap's often playful ironic turns.

in the quiet of the night
in the quiet of the night
when alert ears pulse
i can hear again the words,
the poet i was earlier reading:
he is the one person i understand fully.
i understand he is a poet
& i understand his poetry.
i even understand my own knowledge
of this privacy which is public literary study.

the words will move on more swiftly
than tomorrow will be now. & i will
know, in reading again,
i do not know him
or any other, or myself, or that any poetry
is the public transaction that it must be.
& it must be private ultimately.
(from Man Snake Apple - 1986)


an old drawing, recycled here

All of his 4 collections of poems were dedicated to someone. His parents, his partner(?) Keith Watson, his brother Anthony and a Japanese friend Miyuki Nagaoka. Maybe the strength of his poems and his craft lie in this - their humanity - the relational, which extends easily to the relationship of poet-poem-reader in words.

in memory of) anthony
your coffin had no nails.
years i have lived with this nailed feeling,
every moment forgotten. & other moments,
larger remembrances, are also of you.
when all is said & not forgotten,
may it be known to me
& leave behind, not necessarily
even a need to understand
what you all along would know,
this long, long trail of quick, sharp sorrow.

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P/S Arthur Yap published 2 of his more recent poems in QLRS (click to read).

in for the long run

maki squarepatch's child's room - images by J

Tuesday evening J and I trooped to a nighttime preview of the Singapore Design Festival"hub" at the City Hall and former Supreme Court building. I'm really not going to comment on the Festival, except to say that it's worth going to take a look at the exhibitions there because:

(1) they made these -
J and I found installations by...not 1...but (at least) 4 female Singapore designers at a show called "Utterrubbish" (hmm, yes, I'm also not a fan of this title). There's a child's room by maki squarepatch, a living room of recycled fashion by Hansel, a small showcase of poetic works by our favourite argentum in one of the judge's rest chambers, and in Court Room 21 is an installation by a new friend, the inimitable kwodrent. Hey, I know it's not about gender, BUT.


works by argentum


work those legs in the city hall

(2) you get to wander around these buildings
Not many folks used to get to wander freely the corridors and court rooms of the City Hall and former Supreme Court building (or maybe not many folks wanted to). If you had missed taking a look at the insides of the buildings during last year's Singapore Biennale, you should do so. The Singapore Institute of Architect's show "ArchiFest" is held in, for instance, the historic chambers where the Japanese signed the surrender papers in 1945.


doors of the city hall

That evening the President's Design Awards were also given out at the Esplanade.

Among the 7 folks who won prizes this year, these 2 stood out for me. Mr Mok Wei Wei (of W Architects) and Mr Eng Siak Loy (currently a designer with the National Parks Board, but the unsung designer behind many of our stamps and our dollar notes!), not for being trendy or enterprising, but for being committed to good design as a career. They have a lifetime of work to speak silently for their art, intelligence and commitment.

Walking home that night, I was thinking if a stronger case needs to be made for commitment and dedication. Often, the arts and design are marketed as sudden flashes of inspiration. Of course there are these moments, and (ah, as Ms Zhang Ai Ling had once declared) what is fame if it is cannot be enjoyed when you are young. But I wonder if we often forget the sheer hard work, the patience and the stamina a designer and artist need.

So to all those folks who feel a little discouraged and getting tired after a trying sprint, the consistency of vision is not only a matter of space, but also time. And Ms Zhang, though not wrong, may not be the only one right.

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P/S There are several other events/exhibitions taking place at other venues, such as an exhibition on Alvar Aalto at the NUS Cultural Centre, swiss architecture at Vivocity, Japanese graphic artists groovisions at the National Museum etc. Take a look at the more complete programme here.

3 < 1

I drew and painted this today. The last drawing was 3 months ago. This year I made 16 illustrations. Last year, at least 60. This year I wrote 0 stories. Last year, there was, at least, 1. This year, I spent an average of 12 hours at the office, and maybe 1 hour outside the office thinking about work each day. For that, my bank account and paycheck boast of slightly bigger figures. Last year, I spent more time walking and talking with J and our family - and maybe even with friends. I'm not sure if these past 2 years were placed side by side, both sides of the equation would add up just right. But the truth - even if excuses are easy to find - is that whatever the numbers stand for and however they are valued, they reflect our choices.

Lust, Caution

Cover illustration by Eileen Chang/Zhang Ailing for her own book 流言 (trans. Rumour)

There are 3 reasons to watch Lust, Caution, and for this I shall quote the folks sitting around, beside and behind J and I in the cinema on Saturday. [warning: spoilers ahead]

(1) "[gasp]...so cute"
Even the dogs, cute white ones or saggy-faced Alsatians, play their role well. Every single member of the cast was superb.

(2)"Wah, Louis Vuitton ah"
This film being set in wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong, the costumes (and yes, the suitcases were beautiful too) and art direction are excellent. But because the film could be seen as a play within a film, starting first with the group of over zealous students taking their anti-Japanese play too seriously beyond the stage to the dangerous real world and eventually going undercover as spies for the resistance, the idea of stage and reality, deception and truth gets, a fabricated reality vs real life drama require elaborately set up apartments, fabricated lives, fancy cheongsums that were part-costumes part-real wardrobe. In order to "act out" her seduction of Mr Yee, "Mdm Mak" aka Wang Jiazhi must first has to lose her virginity to a student/fellow actor.

This materiality of their dramas finds its ultimate symbol in the gigantic diamond ring that Mr Yee (Tony Leung's character) purchases for "Mdm Mak" aka Wang Jiazhi. It is a mark of his love for her (since it is a gem he denies his wife), but perceived at first by Wang as a secret transaction with an imagined enemy. And when she accepts and understands the significance of this token, it becomes ironically the start of his betrayal of her - when confronted by the evidence of his complicity with this "spy" (or an insinuation that the money he used to purchase the rock is ill-gotten), Yee must deny that the ring is his.

(3)"哎，張愛玲的故事都是這樣的啦"
For me, the biggest reason to watch this film (other than Lee Ang's interpretation) is that it is based on Eileen Chang/Zhang Ailing's short story of the same name.

It is not the first movie that has been made from her stories. There had been 紅玫瑰白玫瑰 (Red Rose, White Rose) by Stanley Kwan, 傾城之戀 (Love in a Fallen City) by Ann Hui and 半生緣 (Eighteen Springs). Zhang herself wrote screenplays, including the famous 不了情 (Unending Love).

What makes her stories great material for screen is Zhang's ability to turn the internal drama of her characters' lives (their motivations, thoughts, conflicts and contradictions) into social situations - not sitcoms - rather, micro/social situations born out of the larger political or rather historical forces. There can be cruel caricatures (I'll scann later some illustrations/actual caricatures by Zhang - her satiric eye/hand) but however harsh her portrayal of these characters (even the do-gooders have some suspicion cast upon their naivete), they are ultimately excused because humanity - however strong individuals may be - is weak. It is weak in the face of the historical and societal powers/forces/movements it has created in the first place, victim to this tyranny of our collective stupidity/folly/pride. We fail each other. History fails us. We fail ourselves.

You must admit it's a rather tragic vision! And this bears out in Zhang's own life (or at least, I think, that's what us "Zhang-mi"/fans like to imagine!). It is tempting to see 色、戒 with an eye on Zhang's biography. After all, Zhang's first documented love was a married man and a supposed traitor/collaborator with the Japanese. Her mother, like Wang Jiazhi's father, eventually also left for the UK, leaving Zhang alone to live her aunt in China. Zhang, too, spent her university days in Hong Kong, before returning to Shanghai.

But unlike Wang Jiazhi in 色、戒, Zhang was no hapless student who gets lost in the fictional reality of others or of her own device. Zhang was a writer. So with words, she survived. Words provided income. Words afforded a distance, distance gave her writing its wit and irony. But distance also confirmed the tragic vision in words. And if words were not enough (or too much), she created for herself the physical distance of a life in America at age 35. There she survived another 50 years, writing mostly essays and academic work and translations (inc. translations of Emerson) and died alone in her apartment.

p/s For those interested in Zhang's own reading of her short story and rebuttal to a critic in 1978, read her essay 羊毛出在羊身上，談<色、戒>

magic street

all images by J - click for flickr view

We called it a magic street. But there's nothing Harry Potter-ish about it all it. In fact, there's nothing very magical, not even in the metaphorical sense of the word. I've forgotten why we called it a magic street.

The street leads to the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. In both our visits there, 4 years apart, the street barely changed - at least in our memory. Both visits were between 4-5 in the late afternoon. In Autumn, the light would have started to change.



At that hour, there would be kids who have stayed on a little later in school rushing home; maybe one or two housewives would go by on their bikes. But save for these bodies, and even quieter ones in the slow neighbourhood shops, the street was mostly deserted. We are greedy anomalies on this street, stopping every few steps for photographs, to decipher signs, stare at shop windows, and both times for yakitori, eaten at a bench outside the shop - nonetheless, quietly.





Maybe it was our regressive impulse - wanting to marvel at this sense of time having stood still, or the quotidian amidst glitzy, metropolitan Tokyo.

Maybe it was the quiet - not the monumental quiet of ancient forests or endless canyons, or the hushed silence of religious halls and libraries - but the quiet of activity being somewhere else instead, the quiet of a clearing.

city walls

all images, except this, by J

The walls of ancient cities mark their boundaries and serve to control traders, aliens, intruders and disease. Today's cities are marked instead by their porosity. They boast not of limits, but of - to use our island's governmentspeak - "possibilities" (or the super cringe-worthy "possibicities").

Maybe today's city walls are represented instead by our museum and gallery walls. While these walls face inward, they invite instead of deny and repel. They close off a room, but open up imaginative spaces and physical spaces for not only inhabitants of the city but all kinds of folks to question, critique, demand, contemplate, play. These walls hold up for its inhabitants and visitors to view the strength of a city's financial and intellectual currency with the world, its ability to talk above its domestic noise, and its vitality.

In fact, a mark of cities that are deemed to have arrived is that their museums and galleries are must-sees. So if you are in Tokyo, us amps recommend these art museums/galleries that we saw:

(1) The Mori Arts Centre on the 53rd flr of Mori's Roponggi Hills development. [Y1,500 for a combined ticket to the gallery & city view]

View just below the 53rd Flr Mori Art Centre

It is not a conventional gallery or museum in the sense that there is no permanent collection to speak of. When we were there, the gallery was showing the 2nd "Roponggi Crossings" (the first was in 2004). The team of curators had chosen artists whom they had produced the most exciting work and reflected the future of Japanese contemporary art. Another common idea was that of working across disciplines or having made some form of crossover. Hence there were artists who also produced manga, collaborated with musicians, or started in the field of photography or as an ironsmith! Visitors could vote for the most impactful work. Both J and I - aiyah, soulmates mah! - chose the same artist - a photographer who had taken these nightmarish yet strangely alluring shots of underground Tokyo and animals in test labs.

(2) Suntory Museum of Art at the Tokyo Midtown development. [ Y1,300 for entry]

tombuildings

(Enroute to Tokyo Midtown, we were distracted by the large peaceful cemetary grounds right in the middle of fashionable Aoyama. It's worth a restful 30min stroll. To get there, exit the Aoyama Itochome station, it is a 10min walk. You can spot the cemetary on the map outside the station. These marble obelisks of varying sizes and age are just like the buildings in the background, or should I compare instead the buildings of the cityscape to these tombstones?)

It's a small and elegant 2 storey corporate gallery in the new Tokyo Midtown development. The show it had on then was on these old Japanese screens. Not quite stuff we are normally excited about, but the pieces were exquisitely made and preserved. Suntory has another museum by the Osaka Harbour (there are tons of corporate galleries in Tokyo, such as the Shiseido Gallery, the Seibu Gallery, Parco Gallery, many of which had launched artists' careers. Ah why won't our Temasek Holdings or SIA, please, start a corporate collection and gallery? Even Korea's Samsung has, that's another mark of a nation!). The Suntory Museum is worth a 45min visit if it's the only thing in the upmarket Tokyo Midtownthat you can afford! There were troops of middle-aged Japanese visitors when we were there.

(3) The 21-21 Design Sight designed by Tadao Ando and buried in the garden of Tokyo Midtown [ Y2,000 for entry]

21-21 Design Sight by Tadao Ando right beside the Tokyo Midtown

When we were there, 21-21 Design Sight was showing a brilliantly curated, thought-provoking, engaging and enjoyable exhibition on "Water", presenting installations that interpreted this resource - its qualities, its forms in the landscape and weather, its textures and sounds, our memories and imagined experiences. The entry ticket was costly, but worth every yen.

(4) The new National Art Centre Tokyo (NACT) designed by the late Kurokawa 5min away from Tokyo Midtown


Kurokawa had passed away a week or so before we visited this museum. A few nights ago, we had also watched a documentary (probably a special re-run) of Kurokawa travelling somewhere in Eastern Europe (or was it Russia?) re-visiting an old friend and speaking about the architectural works in that city. We did not know then that he had just died. The NACT had several shows running concurrently - one on Vermeer, one showcasing 100 years of Nitten (a government-sponsored art competition that probably represented a particularly conventional and staid strain still present), and one of photographs by Shigeo Anzai. All the exhibitions were individually ticketed.

We caught the exhibition of Shigeo Anzai's (a ticket was Y1100, with a Y200 discount if you showed the stub for the Suntory Museum) photographs of various artists and their works/shows from the 1970s till today. It was chronologically presented, with photographs tacked on the walls organised as a timeline. No fancy curation - but as a document of documentation, it was apt and showed the sheer breadth and development of Japanese contemporary art.


The Omotesando Hills development and fashionable crowd are part of the pervasive art - spot the pattern!

But what amazed me was (not unlike the Suntory Museum) the crowds that were present at the museum. It was a weekday afternoon, and even when we left at 6pm, with us was a group of about 100 visitors who had remained in the museum till closing time.

Hmmm. I know this is a vacation, but these visits to the various galleries and museums naturally led me to think about work and our tropical island 7 hours away by plane. What do our museums and galleries mean to us?


Tired salaried folks are the same everywhere in the world.

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P/S. If you have the time, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is also well worth a visit. It is located beside Kiba park, which is a 30-45min train ride away from places like Shibuya. We were there 4 years and had gone there again this time, only to discover that it was shut for the installation of a new show on art and design due to open the next day!

sl/b/urp

We are at a lost for words after 10 tiring but inspiring days in Japan (also mostly because most evenings I've too much beer, sake or choya-soda in me to concentrate!), so here's some pseudo-manga:




what competiting in Tokyo looks like - click for larger view in fickr

it's a squeeze!

J spied upon this 1.4m tall Tokyo-ite all dressed in 70s gear 2 tables away from us.

We finally arrived in Tokyo this evening, having done all the touristy visits in the Kansai region, and now back doing what we probably would do at home too - having a coffee, watching the people go by and drawing in our books. On difference is Tokyo's late night TV. It is a strange humour, to have a detective series where the lead detective's special skill is flinging his wig (boomerange style) at criminals and the female detective has perfected the art of attacking using the suction power of those rubbery breast-enhancers.

J: Young people born in Tokyo or even Osaka are really lucky.
Y: Why do you say that?
J: I mean, look at all of them here - there's so much more they can do, the creativity and - .
Y: I don't know about that. It must be terribly competitive and pressurising. How do you stand out in a place like Tokyo?
J: [puzzled] I don't agree. Why is there a need to compete at all? You can just do whatever you are good at.
Y:... You know, you are not wrong... maybe it's my small pond mentality to say that. When you're not in a small pond, who cares about being a big fish? It's just the whole big ocean -

Space, physical space, is a previous commodity in Tokyo. The price of our hotel room - luxurious by Tokyo standards - is evidence. Unlike "global" Singapore which tries its darned best to remain "relevant" to the rest of world, there is an insularity here that comes from having a homogenous population and a fairly self-contained and sufficient domestic market. Similarly the Tokyo-ites seemed to have evolved and made good the limitations of space, and in their design responses, made this into an art. J calls this the "aesthetics of squeeze". Ah, a most Japlish term!